NH officials discuss the prospect of execution

CONCORD, N.H. 
New Hampshire, which last executed an inmate more than 70 years ago by hanging, would likely carry out an execution in a prison gymnasium rather than construct a costly death chamber for its lone death row prisoner, Corrections Commissioner William Wren said Wednesday.

Addressing a symposium on the death penalty at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, Wren said he and his staff are "dusting off" execution protocols from the 1930s but the $1.8 million needed to build a lethal injection chamber isn't in the cards in a state where inmates are so rarely condemned to death.

The symposium offered a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the case of Michael Addison, sentenced to death in 2008 for gunning down Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs following a violent crime spree. If the state's highest court upholds his conviction and death sentence, Addison could be the first convict executed in New Hampshire since 1939.

Wren said Addison doesn't really live on "death row" because the state no longer has one. He is housed in the state prison's maximum security unit, living alongside other convicts.

The last person executed in New Hampshire was Howard Long, an Alton shopkeeper who molested and beat a 10-year-old boy to death. He was hanged — still a viable form of execution in New Hampshire if lethal injection is not possible.

Panelists made it clear Addison's case threw a curve at a state criminal justice system that had no modern-day experience with capital litigation.

Attorney Chris Keating, who supervised Addison's defense, said there was no legal "infrastructure" in place for a death penalty case — no bank of motions built from other cases, no expertise and a severe dearth of resources to handle the astronomical costs of such a case. He likened it to being told to build a nuclear bomb for the first time.

"The stakes are really high if I get it wrong," he said.

Keating said he and former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte had to approach the Executive Council to fund their case.

"The difference was, Ayotte was welcomed and people were very anxious to provide her with the funding necessary," Keating said. "I had to sheepishly ask for my $137,000 for initial spending."

Addison's defense at his trial alone cost $3 million, said Keating, who considered looking to hire a lead defense lawyer from another state because no New Hampshire lawyers had experience with death cases. He said it was sheer luck that a public defender with experience in death cases in Louisiana moved to the state in time to head Addison's defense team.

Judge Tina Nadeau, chief judge of the superior court, said capital cases magnify all aspects of a trial.

"It's like due process on steroids," she said.

For instance, the judge who presided over Addison's case typically issues two or three orders during the course of a murder trial, Nadeau said. In Addison's she filled two binders.

Former Attorney General Phil McLaughlin was the only panelist willing to address a question about whether race — Addison is black, his victim white — contributed to his death sentence.

He contrasted Addison's sentence with that of John Brooks — a wealthy, white businessman convicted of paying others to kill a handyman he thought had stolen from his family. The same year Addison was sentenced to death a jury gave Brooks a life sentence.

"I cannot imagine how any conscientious citizen could not be riveted by the contrast," said McLaughlin, who cast a dissenting vote on a panel that voted in December 2010 to retain the death penalty.

Keating said he doubted the state's next death penalty case would cost less to defend, post-Addison.

"The next capital case could have extraordinarily complex issues, identity issues," Keating said. "You don't get really efficient until you start doing a lot of them."